HPRC Fitness Arena: Total Force Fitness

After a major trauma, illness, or life-changing event, it is often necessary to adapt your lifestyle and create a new version of what feels “normal.”

Bad things happen. Unfortunately, you can count on experiencing different traumas, deaths, illnesses, and injuries. As a Warfighter (or military family), you can probably expect to face these kinds of situations more often than other people. That doesn’t make these experiences any more pleasant, and often it doesn’t make them any less surprising. After a major trauma, illness, or life-changing event, it is often necessary to adapt and create a “new normal.”

Studies of “post-traumatic growth” have found that trauma survivors can grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually after horrendous experiences such as cancer, terrorism, sexual assault, plane crashes, and even combat. It’s common to react with an emotional roller coaster of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Your natural instinct might be to run from these feelings. However, post-traumatic growth can be accomplished better by taking steps to approach them. The people who support you (including but not limited to therapists and family members) can do the following:

Listen empathically, accepting and encouraging full expression of feelings.

Avoid clichés and easy answers. Hearing “there will be brighter days” is not helpful.

Be patient. Changing perspective won’t happen overnight.

Offer a helpful relationship, recognizing there is no “magic technique” or “quick fix.”

You can also be an active agent in your own healing. One technique that can be useful to you is to tell and retell versions of your story in order to become more immune to the hard parts and to reach a point where you can find new meaning in it. People of any age, including Warfighters, can benefit from actively embracing a “new normal” through taking advantage of your relationships and developing a new twist on their story, even when this initially might seem far-fetched.

Rituals can enhance your performance as an athlete, Warfighter, and family member.

Athletes have rituals they engage in to ensure their best performance. Warfighters have rituals around paroling, shooting, and other mission-specific tasks to create the right mindset for the situation. Families can benefit from rituals too.

Consider the types of rituals your family typically engages in. There are probably more than you think. Celebrating holidays, personal traditions such as pancakes on Saturday mornings or memorializing the death of a loved one, and simple everyday acts such as bedtime stories or morning tea are all rituals.

When a couple comes together and starts a family, each person brings along his/her own rituals. Consider it an opportunity to build something new together—a blending of histories. For example, let’s say you grew up celebrating Christmas with your family, but your partner’s family celebrated Hanukah. As a couple you can take the rituals that are meaningful to each of you personally and celebrate all of them to create a new combined holiday tradition for your own family.

Rituals certainly can help your own performance, but they also help deepen bonds and create a distinct family identity that can be supportive in both happy and stressful times.

Is your child interested in running as a sport? Check out some helpful strategies on proper running form, hydration, and other tips to ensure your child is safe and gets the most out of this healthy activity.

Running provides an inexpensive and effective way to get your child or adolescent excited about physical fitness for a lifetime. Beyond the physical health benefits, running can also lead to improvements in classroom behavior, self-control, self-esteem, alertness, enthusiasm, creativity, and maturity.

For children of all ages, running is one of the most versatile and natural physical activities. In younger children, running should be encouraged through fun activities such as tag, capture the flag, the fox and the hound, and red light green light. By keeping running fun, your child may learn to enjoy exercise at an early age, helping him or her maintain those habits as he/she gets older.

For older children interested in the sport of running, there are some additional ways to help your child become a strong, healthy runner. Learn more about proper running form, training, hydration, diet, shoes, and safety, which may help your child’s performance and may also decrease his or her risk of injury.

It is known that exposure to air pollutants during exercise may affect your health and performance, but what can you do about it?

Inhalation of major air pollutants has been found to decrease lung function and exacerbate symptoms of exercise-induced bronchospasms, including coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath. In order to meet oxygen demands during light- to moderate-intensity exercise, you take in more air with each breath. And when you breathe through your mouth, you bypass the nose’s natural filtration of large particles and soluble vapors. As your exercise intensity increases, you breathe faster and deeper, which also increases the amount of pollution inhaled and the depth it travels into your respiratory system.

If you live in or near a busy city, you are exposed to even more combustion-related pollutants—such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), and ozone—that can inflame your airways and worsen asthmatic responses. Exposure to freshly generated emissions is most common near areas of high vehicular traffic.

While indoor exercise is often a good alternative to limit exposure to outdoor pollutants, some indoor conditions may be just as toxic. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)—the more toxic NOx—is usually higher in gas-heated homes and indoor areas with poor ventilation. Carbon monoxide poisoning is also more likely to occur indoors. When carbon monoxide is in your system, the blood carries substantially less oxygen, reducing performance and eventually leading to carbon monoxide poisoning. Be sure to choose well-ventilated areas for indoor exercise.

Particulate matter and ozone are two significant pollutants you may be exposed to outdoors. Inhalation of high levels ofparticulates has been shown to reduce exercise performance as much as 24.4% during short-term, high-intensity cycling. Women may be more vulnerable than men to certain particulates, associated with greater decrements in performance. Ultrafine particle concentrations are highest in freshly generated automobile exhaust, and these small particles can be carried deep into the lungs. However, the further away you are from fresh exhaust, the less concentrated the particulates.

Bad ozone occurs lower in the atmosphere; it is not directly emitted into the air but is created from chemical reactions between NOx, volatileorganiccompounds (VOCs), heat, and sunlight. Ozone levels also are higher in summer than in winter; and especially in larger, hotter cities, concentrations tend to peak around midday when solar radiation is highest. Exposure to ozone during exercise has been found to increase resting blood pressure, reduce lung function, and decrease exercise capacity.

The risks associated with not exercising at all are far greater than the risks of exercising outdoors; it just takes a little more planning on days and in conditions when pollution is bad. When planning outdoor exercise activities, follow these tips to limit your exposure to pollutants:

Avoid exercising in areas of heavy traffic, such as along highways and during rush hour.

During summer, exercise earlier in the morning, when ozone levels and temperatures are not as high.

Check the domestic or international air-quality ratings to determine if it’s safe to exercise outside. Limit your time outside on Code Red and Code Orange days. Environmental conditions on these days are not healthy, especially for children, the elderly, and people with existing respiratory conditions.

Exercise indoors when the air quality indicates high ozone and particulate levels.

Exercise can greatly enhance mental health and well-being, but can it play a part in suicide prevention?

Suicide is a complex issue with many contributing factors, including mental health issues. Focusing on treating mental health issues and strengthening mental fitness is key for suicide prevention. Currently, efforts within the military focus on education, early intervention, decreasing stigma towards mental health treatments, and adapting a holistic approach to fostering mental fitness—which includes exercise. Learn more about how physical activity and regular exercise can improve mental health in HPRC’s answer to “Can exercise be a part of suicide prevention?”

Family interactions can impact your children’s sleep. Learn about what kinds of interactions to avoid.

Did you know that the nature of your family relationships can impact your children’s sleep? Children in home environments with verbal and/or physical conflict do not sleep as well as children in more nurturing home environments. Children exposed to negative family interactions are likely to wake up more, stay awake longer in the middle of the night, and/or sleep less overall.

The conflict can be between parents and children as well as children observing the interactions between their parents. The kinds of behavior include yelling, name-calling, making threats, and physical assault such as slapping or hitting with a closed fist. Behavior like this is often triggered by anger and/or stress, but you can learn to control your anger and reduce family stress, which will help your child’s sleep and a whole lot more. Thus, growing up around nurturing relationships can have multiple benefits.

Check out our updated information on antigravity treadmills and their use in injury prevention and rehabilitation.

Antigravity treadmills are becoming increasingly popular in injury prevention and rehabilitation settings. These special treadmills reduce the stress placed on the lower body during rehabilitative exercises, like running and walking, while still conditioning muscles. However, there are still questions as to whether the scientific evidence supports their considerable cost. For more about the use, evidence, and cost of these devices, read HPRC’s “Effectiveness of Antigravity Treadmills for Injury Rehabilitation.”

Stress really does affect performance. But when you pair stress with mental health concerns, performance can take an even bigger hit.

Stress isn’t an isolated event. It can infiltrate your life in many ways. A survey of more than 12,000 military personnel across the services revealed the impact of stress levels on Warfighter performance. Compared with those with low stress, Warfighters with high stress were much more likely to be late for work, leave work early, get hurt on the job, or miss work altogether because of illness or injury. These trends were especially strong among a smaller subset of personnel who had recently needed a mental health evaluation. Other research suggests that stress can combine with a person’s (often unknown) predispositions, sometimes triggering mental health issues.

There are specific strategies you can use when setting up a performance-enhancement plan. Check out the “Ten Rules.”

Whether training for a mission, an athletic event, or simply to maintain your edge, there are strategies you use to enhance your chance of success, including “rules” such as figuring out where you are before you start and setting up an environment that supports your new plan. Check out HPRC’s new card, “Peak Performance: Rules of Engagement,” to learn all of them. And for even more information, check out the accompanying Performance Strategies.

If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, you might not be getting enough iodine to meet your needs (and your baby’s). Learn more about the role of iodine and how much you should be taking.

Iodine is an essential nutrient. It plays a key role in how well your thyroid functions and is particularly important during pregnancy and breastfeeding for the development of your baby’s brain. The Recommended Dietary Allowance for iodine for most adults is 150 micrograms (mcg). But women who are pregnant or breastfeeding need slightly more: 220 mcg and 290 mcg daily, respectively.

Iodine is present in some foods such as fish, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and grains. Iodine is also added to table salt—referred to as “iodized salt.” Although most Americans eat too much salt, much of it comes from processed foods and typically isn’t iodized. Consequently, many women who are pregnant are iodine-deficient. If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend taking a prenatal vitamin to ensure you’re getting enough of all your vitamins and minerals, including iodine. In addition, if you’re vegan or you don’t eat dairy products or fish, talk to your doctor about your iodine status.

Read all prenatal dietary supplement labels carefully—whether they’re prescription or over-the-counter—so you can be certain your prenatal vitamin contains sufficient iodine to meet your needs during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Also, be sure to look for one that is third-party certified. For more information about iodine, read this fact sheet from the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements.

2012

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